KF #19. Cultivates Innovation

Pete Mockaitis
Tom, thanks so much for joining us here on the How to Be Awesome At Your Job podcast.

Thomas Heffner
Pete, thank you so much. I can’t tell you how excited I am for our conversation.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, me too. I’ve been very impressed by you, meeting you at Podcast Movement and with all the amazing guests you’ve gotten on your show. I was like, “Oh, that person turned me down and that person turned me down.” Tom, what are you doing?

Thomas Heffner
Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, I think maybe part of is that connection with the – is it the masters in Positive Psychology? Is that the name of the program at U Penn?

Thomas Heffner
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. I told my wife if we ever have more money than we need, this would just be something fun I’d love to do is to go to that program. How did that work out for you?

Thomas Heffner
I always tell people it was – outside of getting married to my wife and having my three amazing children, it was the best decision I’ve ever made. I was really fortunate, I’ll just say this upfront, that my work, my organization paid for the whole thing. I probably – looking back on the experience, I would have paid the tuition that I paid. At the time, I wouldn’t have paid it just because I didn’t know.

Pete Mockaitis
The outside looking in. Sure. Cool. Anyway, that’s a good decision you made. Another interesting decision or caper, I don’t know what we’d call it, but apparently it happened in your life at one point that you kissed Alyssa Milano. Tell us all about this.

Thomas Heffner
I wish this was a really cool story where I was like, “Listen, Alyssa and I were in the back seat of the Corvette,” but really it’s a little bit less cool. It’s still cool, but a little bit less cool.

When I was younger and I was 12 years old back in 1992, I was a wrestler on the base of Quantico, Virginia. We had a private wrestling club there and it was a very competitive one. We were selected to go to the Great American Presidential Fitness Workout. We got to go to the White House. At the time it was, I guess it was 1992, it was probably George Bush.

But we got to go there and do a little exhibition. There was other people doing and other groups of people doing exhibitions. Arnold Schwarzenegger was there. That was when he was still known as The Terminator. Lots of celebrities were there and also Alyssa Milano, who was still pretty big at that time. Still big I would say.

I’m doing my thing. We’re doing our little wrestling exhibition. She comes along. Of course, everybody wants to get her autograph and talk to her. I go up to her and say, “Alyssa, Alyssa, can I get your autograph?” I’m 12 years old. I’m old enough to know that she’s pretty hot.

She says, “Well, listen,” she gets down on – bends down and whispers into my ear, she says, “Listen, if I give you an autograph, then I’ve got to give everybody an autograph, so how about I just give you a kiss instead?” Well, listen, I didn’t have to wait long for that one. I planted one right on her. That’s the story where I got to kiss Alyssa Milano. One of my cool, fun stories in life.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s interesting. You initiated the kiss after she said the words, “What if I gave you a kiss instead?”

Thomas Heffner
You can’t let that go by, man.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s like, just in case she’s kidding, you don’t want to –

Thomas Heffner
Can never let that opportunity pass.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s interesting. By her logic though, if you had waited and then she kissed you, then she might need to kiss everybody, which would be probably worse.

Thomas Heffner
It’s true.

Pete Mockaitis
You come back with kiss a bunch of 12-year-olds, you’d probably have some kind of a cold or … with that.

Thomas Heffner
She was probably safe with our group.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, because you’re super physically fit. You’re examples of good health.

Thomas Heffner
That’s right. Lean, mean, fighting machines.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. In addition to your physical prowess, you have what strikes me as a super impressive sounding job for smart people is a technical categorization for the industry I guess. You work at the John Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, which just sounds super smart. Tell me what does that mean and what’s your role there?

Thomas Heffner
It means I’m the most interesting man – no, I’m kidding. What it means is it’s a – the John Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory is a UARC. That stands for a University Affiliated Research Center. Really what it means is we’re a Department of Defense research center. We do applied research for the DOD, for the military, largely for the Navy. We do it for other services as well, Air Force and Army.

But really it’s a huge organization. There’s almost 7,000 people that work there. We do everything kind of under the sun. I always tell people if you ever see when satellites go up into space—just recently they had solar probe, the Parker probe, go up into space—well, we build and design satellites. We do secondary mission control and NASA does primary mission control.

My buddy actually designed the communications system for it. This is the first every satellite to go the closest ever to the sun. We build missile systems, defense systems, cybersecurity systems. We do health and bio.

A big thing that we’re known for when returning warriors come back from war, a lot of times, especially in Iraq and Afghanistan wars, they were injured. Unfortunately, a lot of them were injured. You had Marines and Army grunts coming back that were – they didn’t have a limb.

One of the things that we designed was a nerve enervated 26 degrees of freedom prosthetic arm, which is to say, it’s nerve enervated so that means if you think it, it does it. If you want your prosthetic arm to pick up that cup of coffee, then it picks up that cup of coffee.

Pete Mockaitis
Whoa.

Thomas Heffner
Yeah, really, really cool stuff.

Pete Mockaitis
That is wild. 26 degrees of freedom. Explain. Well, maybe don’t list all 26, but I mean-

Thomas Heffner
Yeah, so in space – what that means is it’s still probably not going to be artificial – a future world where it’s like, “Wow, this is better than my real arm,” but it means it gives you a lot more articulation, a lot more freedom to move and use that limb as if it was your own.

It’s not going to be quite the same, but they keep getting better and better. They add more degrees of freedom. They add more – miniaturize those electronics, etcetera, etcetera.

But I think what it does and what it shows is kind of the breadth and level of expertise that we have at our organization where really we can do end to end systems engineering all the way through down to microelectronic engineering and everything in between.

It’s a really fascinating place to work. I’m really blessed to work with just the smartest engineers in the world. I always tell people I don’t know how I got in. Maybe I snuck in through the backdoor, but-

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that is really cool. Then part of your thing is innovation, design thinking, making new cool ideas happen. You do that both at work as well as teaching other organizations and teams how to do that. I’d love to hear maybe if you could orient us to just a fun story of a nifty new idea taking off and how it came to be.

Thomas Heffner
Yeah, let me back up just one moment. My background is originally in electrical engineering. I did that for like ten years before I switched over doing innovation and design thinking, design thinking being kind of one method that you can drive innovation in an organization or a project, etcetera, etcetera.

That’s what I’ve been doing the last five years, both using design thinking to solve these really tough challenges, but then also to teach it in organizations, be it military organizations or other organizations. If I’m thinking of a really cool project, innovation project, there’s a few to pick from here. What would I pick?

So, one that I think is really neat and I think – this is going to sound self-serving because this one of the ideas that I had – I think it’s really impactful because it changed the way fundamentally that we did business or that we solved problems at the lab.

A while back, about five years ago, our director said, “Hey listen, we want to come up with something to help us do better – to be more innovative at the lab.” He said, “Come up with something.”

We proposed this idea of innovation space. That in and of itself was not necessarily not that revelatory, but what we ended up coming up with was this pretty big space, I think there was maybe 10 or 15,000 square feet – I can’t remember the exact number – of different little areas or pods, if you will.

We had a maker space where you could 3D print. We had an application space, where you could test – where you could create and develop and test applications, so mobile applications and electronic based applications and things like that. We had a design space where you could run design sprints like Google runs or Amazon. We had – we even had a space where people could come in and learn how to sew on sewing machines because we build and design tactical parachutes and things like that.

Building that little petri dish of innovation, if you will, was a real sea-change for us because we had historically been an organization that was very conservative and traditional. Engineers kind of just went into their office and did a lot of engineering.

They sat down with their books and their mathematical equations and differential equations and Maxwell’s equations and all these different things to solve really hard problems, but they did it oftentimes in isolation or siloed communities and things like that.

What we did here is we created this community and started to build a culture from the ground up where it was okay to go and brainstorm on a topic or an idea that we didn’t have business in. It was okay to go and try out new ideas and to prototype ideas really fast. I’m talking in a day or two. I’m not talking breadboarding, which is for all us engineers, we understand what breadboarding is.

It was a way for us to build in engagement opportunities to invite everybody, not just engineers, but program managers, support staff, admin staff, etcetera, etcetera to be part of that ideation process, to generate new ideas and then to test those ideas out.

In and of itself, like I said, it may not sound that amazing, but it was a real sea-change to allow us to be more open-minded to how we do business, to how we solve problems because traditionally that’s just not something we did. It was very kind of linear and waterfall and just “We have these analytical tools. We’re going to spend our time and we’re going to crunch those numbers and that’s it.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s cool. Just what I’m visualizing is just sort of the physical elements and dimensions of it with the 3D printing and the app development area. I don’t know what that would mean.

I’m imagining that you would have lots of different devices, like, “Hey, what’s it look like in iPad? What’s it look like on a Kindle? What’s it look like on a Kindle Fire? What’s it look like on a Samsung Surface?” Is it Microsoft Surface? Samsung Galaxy. Well, I don’t know. All of the devices is kind of what I’m imagining that looks like.

Thomas Heffner
Yeah, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s like, “Oh, that looks sort of screwed up on this size screen. Let’s fix it.”

Thomas Heffner
Yeah, it was really neat actually. I’ll double down on that as well. We had drones in there so people could use drones and try out different things.

One of the things that was really neat was we have this – basically it’s kind of a competitive innovation program, where people can submit ideas and based on the popularity or the merits of the idea, they get X number of funding.

Somebody said, “Listen, I want to come in here and test out guidance and control software for a satellite.” Well, obviously it’s pretty expensive to go and put a satellite up in space and then test out your software. You have to do things before then.

So why don’t I just port it to a drone, one of these parrot drone and just try it and see if it works. That’s a lot cheaper than building some fancy software simulator or worse yet, putting it up in space and actually learning while it’s up in space.

That was something that we had in there because we just wanted to see what can people do with drones. What can people do with, like you said, with iPads? What can people do with – we had a Connect in there, a Microsoft – we still have it – a Microsoft Connect in there. People were using that for mind flight, which is building a flight automation system or a flight navigation system where you can control flight with your mind.

There was lots of different things. Just putting it in there, it forces people to say, “Well, I don’t know what that is,” especially if you’re somebody that’s like “Well, I’ve got 30 years of expertise in radar. I don’t know how to use this Connect. I don’t know how to use this parrot drone,” or whatever it is, but go in there and learn what it is to use a 3D printer or a parrot drone and what can you do new and different.

Just forcing people to be a little bit outside of their comfort zone or inviting/encouraging I guess is a better way to say that.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s really cool. That’s really cool. I was just thinking recently my wife and brother and I, we’ve invented a couple things with baby, which – just little things in terms of “Let’s put a mesh fabric and Velcro and there you go. This will be handy.” It was just really fun to just like physically make stuff.

I just think – I don’t know if this exists somewhere in a college course, but I think that would just be one of the coolest courses ever, like how to make stuff. We got a couple weeks on drawing, on sewing, on coding, on woodworking, on 3D printing, electric circuits, on welding.

It’s just like, oh hey, I know how to make things. That would just I think activate a different part of the brain and it seems like that’s exactly what you guys are seeing there is it’s sparking all the more good ideas and successful evolving of ideas.

Thomas Heffner
I 100% agree. I think what it also does is it allows you – all innovation is, is really hypothesis testing. You have an idea, you have some hypothesis of how that idea is going to exist in the world and so what’s the quickest, most effective way that you can test that idea.

Using things like Play-Doh, using things like parrot drones, using things like 3D printing, all these different mediums, if you will, is a way for you to prototype those quickly and efficiently so that you can learn what’s working and what’s not working in terms of how you – the assumptions you have about that idea.

And that’s really, really important to learn early on while it’s still cheap versus “You know what? We’ve got this idea. We’re going to build it. We’re going to spend a lot of money and design.”

Pete Mockaitis
Make 100,000 of them.

Thomas Heffner
And software. Yeah, and make 100,000 of them and then all of the sudden it’s not what you thought it was because you didn’t get that feedback early and often when it was still cheap.

I always point to the example of Amazon’s 3D phone. There’s 500,000 to a million of those things sitting in a landfill somewhere because they didn’t do a good enough job of doing that rapid prototyping to say, “Okay, would people actually want this thing as you envision it.” They didn’t, so you’ve got about 500,000 phones in a landfill somewhere unfortunately.

Pete Mockaitis
That is a bummer. Yeah. Okay, noted.

Okay, let’s talk about design thinking. It’s a hot topic. It’s a cool phrase. We’ve had a couple guests speak to it a little bit. Could you define what does this mean and who might want to use it?

Thomas Heffner
Yeah,  design thinking I don’t like that term in some ways because it’s jump the shark a little bit. I use human centered design, but for all intents and purposes design thinking, human centered design, they’re interchangeable. What it really is for me and how I define it is it’s a discipline of developing solutions in the service of people. Let’s break that down a little bit.

Discipline , that means what? Practice. Something you do every day, i.e., it’s not a one shot vaccine. So many times people, organizations are like, “I just took this course on innovation,” or “I took this course on creativity and now I’m an expert.” Well, no, it’s a discipline. You have to keep practicing it every day.

Then  developing solutions. If I asked everybody in the room to raise their hands, how many people consider themselves a designer, nobody would raise their hand or very few people, unless you’re in a room full of designers. The truth is is that we’re all designers. This is something that we do implicitly and explicitly every day.

As  a parent if my kid, if my nine-month-old is crying, all right, well, let’s give her a toy. Maybe she won’t cry. I’m designing a better situation. We have to get out of that mode of thinking, “No, no, I’ve got to be some tech entrepreneur. I’ve got to be some technologist.” Anybody can design.

Then  finally, it’s in the service of people. I think this part is really, really important because we’re not designing for things. We’re not designing for widgets. We’re not designing for the heck of it. We’re designing for people to make their life appreciably better in some way. I think yeah, that’s how we define it. It’s the discipline of developing solutions in the service of people.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, very good. Very good. So then, I’m curious when it comes to doing some of this stuff, I think that much of the benefit, or at least my perception, is that suddenly people are getting way more good ideas and those ideas are actually getting to take some shape and some life. How does this unfold?

Thomas Heffner
Yeah,  I think that’s the kind of the very public-facing benefit of design thinking. I think it accelerates collaboration. It accelerates decision making. Ultimately, it accelerates innovation.

One  of the ways that it does that is by generating a lot of ideas in a short amount of time. I think people have to just accept that to get one really good idea, you’re going to have a lot of ideas most of the time.

One  of the ways that we can do this is through brainstorming. Brainstorming gets a bad rap a lot of times. People say it’s not effective, it doesn’t work. A lot of times that’s true; it doesn’t work. That’s because two things. One, whoever is doing the brainstorming, they don’t set kind of rules and expectations for how this is going to unfold and they don’t have a plan for it.

There  are different ways that you can mitigate that. One way is to just set rules, brainstorming rules ahead of time. There are seven rules that we use and that are pretty popular or common across the community.

One  is – I’ll just kind of list them here: defer judgment, encourage wild ideas, build on the ideas of others. This one’s a really important one because oftentimes if you ask people “Are you creative?” or “Are you innovative,” people say, “No, I’m not. That’s for Jack over in graphic design.” The truth is is that one of the easiest ways to be creative is to build on ideas of others.

Think  about the Post-It note. When the Post-It note came out, it was a yellow Post-It note. It was square. That was it. Then somebody said, “Well, what if we made a rectangular one or what if we made multi-color Post-It notes or what if we made Post-It notes that pop up by themselves after you pull it off,” and on and on and on. There’s a variety of ways that you can build on the ideas of others.

Then  there’s stay focused on the topic, one conversation at a time, be visual and go for quantity.

If  you follow these, it’s kind of like going out on the road and getting your license. You wouldn’t just send your 16-year-old out on the road without any kind of rules of the road. You’d say, “Hey, here are the rules of the road. When you stop at a stop sign, if you’re the first person there, you get to go. You have the right of way,” etcetera, etcetera. You give them rules of the road. For me, this is a really important piece.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s funny you talk about building off ideas. The first thing that comes to mind, I think it’s from the movie Bridesmaids, were talking about different potential themes for a shower like Pixar … “Ah yes, and building off of that idea, also Fight Club.”

Thomas Heffner
Sometimes there’s close relationships and sometimes there’s far afield, so it runs the gamut.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. These rules, one of the failings of brainstorming is that these rules don’t get established in the first place. I imagine another failing is that even though we articulate these rules, something in practice shows that these rules are not for real. Could you explain how sometimes that unfolds?

Thomas Heffner
Oftentimes  you can have what I call the hippo in the room, if you’ve ever heard that term, the highest paid person in the room.

One  of the reasons why if you ever see design thinking or human centered design in practice, you will see Post-it notes everywhere. The reason why you have Post-it notes is because the hippo in the room. People don’t want to come up with ideas, especially if it’s something for – something politically sensitive.

I  was just teaching a class and doing some coaching with somebody and they said they were trying to come up with ways to better manage their team and they had Post-it notes. This is another problem that can happen. But their boss was in the session with them. They were sharing out the Post-It notes.

The  beauty of Post-it notes is if you come with an idea and you capture it on a Post-it note and then you put that Post-it note up on the wall, well, now it’s just an idea with everybody else. Even if you do have the hippo in the room, then it democratizes that participation. That is to say, the boss in the room doesn’t know who that idea came from.

Oftentimes , if you don’t do that, what happens is if you come into a brainstorm and the boss is in there and he says, “I’ve got this idea. I have idea X,” well suddenly everybody in the room likes idea X because they’re not stupid.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh yeah, that’s great.

Thomas Heffner
They  know that – yeah, that’s brilliant. That’s amazing. They know everybody – they know that the boss wants to hear that his idea is brilliant. By having Post-it notes and capturing your ideas on Post-it notes, it allows for anonymity. It also allows for the movement of ideas so that you can start clustering ideas and you can start deriving and synthesizing themes or insights from that data.

I  think the hippo in the room can be problematic. If you’re not using some tool – we use Post-it notes – but if you’re not using some tool to democratize the participation, then that can make it difficult for the process to work.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. I guess one implication of that is make sure that the Post-it notes are sufficiently randomized in color or all the same color because if the hippo has blue and Tom has green and Pete has red, well, then pretty soon I’ve defeated a bunch of the purpose.

Thomas Heffner
Right, right. No, you’re 100% right.

Pete Mockaitis
Good to know. I love that very specific tactic that gets a cool result in terms of more creativity flowing through there is Post-it notes such that it’s no longer clear who had the idea and it’s an idea that’s democratized and it’s sort of all of ours, which can then be rearranged. Any other favorite tactics, tips, tools, stuff that gets used here that makes a nice impact?

Thomas Heffner
I  like doing improv exercises. I like pointing to a specific quote from a great improv expert, Stephen Colbert. Maybe you’ve heard of him. Stephen Colbert, I used to be in an improv group as well before I had my third kid and my wife said, “Listen, that’s cool that you like to play improv, but we’ve got a third kid. You should come home.”

Pete Mockaitis
Three is the threshold.

Thomas Heffner
Three  is the threshold. Two, you’re okay. Three, you’re done. But what Steven Colbert had said was, “You’ve got to learn to love the bomb.” What he meant was that you have to embrace failure. You have to embrace this idea of just looking stupid to other people or falling flat on your face because if you don’t, then it’s really hard to do something really impactful. It’s really hard to do something really amazing or just to be successful because we all fall at some point. We all fail at some point.

Truth  be told, when you’re trying to come up with a new idea, most of your ideas are going to suck. That’s just the reality. I always know that to generate, like I said, one good idea, I’m going to have to have maybe 100 ideas that – of which 90% are going to be bad and maybe 10% are things I can work with.

One , just sharing that quote and kind of where it comes from, but then two actually having them practice some improv exercises where they – a couple of examples.

You  can tell a story. If you have a group of people, you can have each person submit a word, so if you start ‘once upon a time’ and each person picks a word and you go around in a circle until you tell a story. Sometimes we’ll do this as “Hey, write a letter to your favorite celebrity.” It becomes quite comical, but it also sets the norm and expectation that “Okay, I’ve got to come up with something here.”

Or  you can do the ‘yes, and.’ I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of the ‘yes, and’ principle. ‘Yes, and’ is basically saying instead of oftentimes when we come up with an idea in practice, whether at work or with our friends, somebody says, “Yes, but it sucks because of this,” or, “Yes, but it won’t work.”

Using  this principle from improv called ‘yes, and’ when you’re on stage, whatever your improv partner throws your way, you’re mentally saying “Yes, and,” and you’re building on that idea.

Doing  an exercise of ‘yes, and’ where you tell a story or you build off an idea can be really, really impactful and a way for them to just start to learn kind of the norms or expectations of how to be more innovative, to be comfortable looking silly, to be comfortable making mistakes or looking stupid. Does that make sense?

Pete Mockaitis
It really does. I think that’s well said, loving the bomb and being comfortable looking silly or stupid. I remember I did a – I’m in Chicago, so we got Second City here. I did an improv intensive, they called it. It was four-ish days just before Thanksgiving a couple years ago. It was really fun.

What was interesting was I remember the first day I was like, “Okay, let’s see what this is all about,” and after being humiliated repeatedly, like the second day I was like, “I don’t know if I want to go back,” but I did. Then my third day, it’s like, “Oh, let’s do this.” It was like I kind of got over that hump. I really enjoyed it.

I was sharing with my friends and family like, “I really kind of liked that. It’s like I got loosened up.” They’re like, “Did you need to be loosened, Pete? You seem pretty loose to me already.”

Thomas Heffner
You’re  kind of already loose. No, I always encourage people that I teach to go and take an improv class because I think even if you don’t want to do improv for the rest of your life, which most people don’t, it’s just a really great experience of learning to become comfortable being uncomfortable.

You  have to do that when you’re doing something new and different, new and innovative because by definition it hasn’t been done before, so there are going to be a lot of times when you’re trying to build something new, where you’re like “I don’t know if this is the right thing. I think-“ or people tell you, “That’s stupid. That’s a dumb idea.”

You’re  going to have that bomb moment, where you can either lean into it and say, “Okay, back to the drawing board,” coming up with some new ideas or iterating on this idea or you can retreat and say, “Okay, I’m not doing that again.”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good stuff. Now you also do some training. You’ve trained a number of US Army folk on resilience. Can we hear a couple pro tips in that realm as well?

Thomas Heffner
Yeah.  I’ll give a quick backstory of why we’re doing this. This comes out of the Iraq and Afghanistan war, where basically we have a long history studying pathology and disease. That history tells us we’re not really that great at treating depression, at treating anxiety, at treating PTSD. This goes back decades through all the different wars.

The  idea here was well, what if we could treat or train – what if we could train soldiers, not unlike Jonas Salk and the polio vaccine, what if we could inoculate against the psychological ills of war by teaching them the cognitive tools of resilience. That’s where this came out of. There’s a really great book called The Resilience Factor that dives into a lot of the insights of this. Definitely check that book out.

But  one think that I think is just really, really important is helping people understand a couple things. One, thinking traps. Thinking traps are these things that our brain does every single day for us because we have millions of pieces of data coming our way at any given moment that our brain is filtering. If we didn’t have these kind of cognitive shortcuts, we would go crazy because it would just be too much data.

We  have things like jumping to conclusions. Well, that’s good for a lot of things, but sometimes it can get us in trouble. Can you think of a time when you jumped to a conclusion that might have gotten you in trouble, Pete?

Pete Mockaitis
Well usually I don’t say them out loud. I was like, “Wait, hold a second Pete. That has not been proven. Let’s hold on for just a moment.”

Thomas Heffner
Yeah . Just last night when I saw the dinner plate on the table after we were supposed to clean up I’m like, “Dang it, did my son leave his plate there again? How many times do I have to tell him?” It turns out it was really my wife. Quickly I jumped to a conclusion that got me in a little bit of trouble.

Another  one is all or nothing thinking, which is one way you can operationalize this or visualize this is say you’re in college and you just took your calculus exam and you failed it. You say, “Son of a gun, I failed that math exam, just like I failed all the other math exams. I suck at math because I’m always going to suck at math.”

Well , if that’s your thinking trap in that moment, then yeah, you’re always going to suck at it because you jump  – well, you’re making that cognitive shortcut, when maybe that morning you got up early. The neighbor’s dog was barking and you went to bed late or you missed breakfast. Maybe there was other things that were contributing to that poor result.

What  it’s really doing, these thinking traps, these are a couple of them – me, me, me thinking or you, you, you thinking are some others – but the takeaway here isn’t the thinking traps themselves, those are important to know, but you need to slow down your thinking. This is a way to do it, so being aware of those thinking traps, it slows down your thinking so that you’re not automatically jumping to a conclusion that might be incorrect. That’s one.

Another  component that I really think is important for resilience training is what I call strengths-based learning or strengths-based – understanding your strengths. Have you ever heard of StrengthsFinder 2.0?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Thomas Heffner
Yeah,  so Strengths Finder 2.0 or values in action survey. Helping people to understand – well, one, to identify and then to understand their strengths and how to use them more is really, really important to being resilient. When I say resilient, I think it’s important here to just kind of define what that is. It means your ability to bounce back and push through adversities.

One  of the ways that we can do that is rely on our strengths, but most people, it turns out, don’t know what their strengths are. Walking around if you asked ten people, the majority of them would not know what their strengths are.

It  turns out that’s really, really important to know because if you know what your strengths are and if you use those strengths every day and get better at them and flex them ad cultivate them and use them, you perform better at work, you perform better in school, in sports, you’re happier, and more importantly too, you’re more resilient. That’s another one that’s really, really important as well.

Pete Mockaitis
That is a nice lineup there. Then the teaching is just largely about “Okay, recognize this pattern and see how it doesn’t serve you so well and here are some sort of interrupts or alternative thought patterns to go to instead so that you can bounce back all the better.”

Thomas Heffner
Exactly  right. Help them become aware of those things and then help them to practice getting better at them. Right.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. Then I’m curious what are the sorts of results that come from this? What’s really encouraging is if you think about boy, the challenges you see in combat are just massive and very high potential for big stress and tragedy and trauma as compared to many of my work day stresses on a totally different lighter scale. What kind of impact does this make in terms of the results, the data, the outcomes in doing the resilience training?

Thomas Heffner
It’s a really great question. It’s still early in the data they’re deploying. What I will tell you is this data or this program was not built as a standalone originally. It was built off the back of resilience programs for – it’s called the Penn Resilience Program. In Philadelphia they developed this program for at risk kids in schools in the inner city.

What I’ll tell you is from that data, it’s positive in terms of yeah, kids are less depressed, they perform better in schools, they’re less anxious, etcetera, etcetera. The data for the military is still kind of – the jury is still kind of out.

In part because this type of study, it’s a really big, large study because guess what? When you’re in the military, people can just tell you what to do and that’s one of the great things about being a psychologist in the military, you get a lot of data. It’s a longitudinal study, which means it’s over a long period of time.

What they’ve found so far is that – and this was a really important point, so I don’t say this lightly – is that it does no harm, which is really important because there are a lot of psychologists that when we first started this program they thought, “Hey, you’re kind of playing a little bit of God here. You’re introducing this intervention and you don’t know if it’s going to negatively impact somebody.”

To which I’d say they’re right. We didn’t have the data yet to show that it wouldn’t harm them, although it was built on a program, a very similar program, with similar concepts and verbiage that was rigorously tested and that hadn’t caused any harm, but fair enough, fair criticism.

The first thing was, okay, let’s evaluate, make sure that we’re doing no harm. For sure, no harm was being done, which was really good. I think over the next I’ll say three to five years, the data will come back and say probably fairly definitively whether it’s helping or not.

I think anecdotally, just speaking with people that we’ve taught that we’ve stayed in touch with or that have become part of the training programs later, it’s been life changing for those people, but the jury is still out on the military side, at least on the domestic side, where teaching in schools and things like that, the same program, that has been a positive result.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, cool. We’ve had a lot of good stuff here. I’m curious, you’ve got a podcast called Next Year Now, which is how we met over at Podcast Movement. What’s that show all about? Do you talk about design thinking, innovation, creativity, reliance or what’s sort of like the main idea over there?

Thomas Heffner
Yeah, no. Thanks for asking. The show, the tagline I like to say, it’s based on the belief that everyday purposeful habits and practices are vital for us to thrive at work and at life. We interview world-class experts in what they do and try to uncover the habits and practices that have fueled their success.

I’d say it kind of spans three major areas. One being health and wellbeing, one being business and entrepreneurship, and then another one being personal development. What I would throw into personal development as well is creativity, innovation and things like that.

Yeah, we’ve interviewed a few people on innovation and creativity. One in particular that had a pretty big impact on my life is Adam Grant. He is the author of Originals, which is a book all about understanding how people become innovative leaders and thought – basically icons. People like Elon Musk and those cats. Yeah, we cover the gamut from that.

Also people that help out with – in some way with your health and wellbeing, so I would throw resilience in there. We interviewed Cory Muscara, who talks about – sorry, who talks about meditation and kind of the impact that that can have on your ability to be resilient or not. Cover a lot of ground there, but it’s a lot of fun.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s awesome. Very cool. Kudos on your top-notch guests and I’m excited for the future wherever it takes you.

Thomas Heffner
One thing that might be of interest for you all is that when we just talked about meditation and resilience and things like that, is we have a book review of a book called The Upside of Stress by Kelly McGonigal. It’s a fantastic book. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend you read it. Lots of really great tips and insights on how to get better at stress, how to combat stress, counter stress, but also work with it.

I think that’s pretty useful information in there, but if you want to get some of the high-level insights and things like that, you can go over to NextYearNowPodcast.com/Awesome, so for your listeners. They can download the free book review and it’s just a nice way to pick up some tips and tricks to help with stress.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool, thanks. Well, now could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Thomas Heffner
Favorite quote. You might remember this one. I don’t know if you were in this session at Podcast Movement, but it was – I’m going to paraphrase it because I can’t remember exactly, but “If you don’t build your dream, then somebody else is going to hire you to build their dream.”

When I first heard that quote at Podcast Movement, it kind of blew me away in part because I’ve spent 15 years working for somebody else until recently in starting my own business.

I think that’s just a really – we’re not all meant to be entrepreneurs, we’re not all meant to go that route, but I think it’s just a nice way to remind us that we all are – we all have that ability, we all have that possibility to create something special in our lives. Yeah, I think that’s my favorite quote.

Pete Mockaitis
That is cool, yes. Within that I would say that – well, I guess entrepreneurship worship is something that I feel like I encounter in the podcast.

Most of my pitches that I receive are for guests who have built a business or done something impressive in terms of going from ten million dollars or to ten million dollars in just two years. Wow, interview this guest. It’s very impressive. That’s cool and I’m happy for them, but it’s not quite as much of a fit here.

But what I dig about that dreams perspective, is that I think it’s very possible to be building a dream or a contributing towards the achievement of your own dream as an employee, either because you’re developing skills that you’re going to go use to go off and be on your own or just the nature of what you’re doing requires a whole lot of people to create.

I’m thinking about movies, TV, or sort of building a rocket ship or inventing an iPhone or something. It’s sort of like this is going to be a collaborative with a ton of people and you have a part of it.

Yeah, I think that quote’s a nice challenge totally for “Hey, is your career really bringing you forward on your dreams or is it not?” Not that the reaction is, “Well, if not, you’ve got to quit and start your own company,” but to gut check it and say this is really what is possible for you earning a living.

Thomas Heffner
Yeah. I think it’s just – if nothing else, if you take nothing else away from that, just be more intentional about what you want to do, because if you don’t – and like you said, this doesn’t have to be an entrepreneurial perspective, just in your career – if you’re not intentional about it, your career will just happen to you.

When it just happens to you, sometimes good things happen, but sometimes good things don’t happen. Just being more intentional about going after your dream. That can be within the context of working in an organization or working for somebody else. It doesn’t have to be entrepreneurial.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good, your career happens to you. Hence the title of the podcast Happen to Your Career. We had Scott Barlow on the show.

Thomas Heffner
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
It was – that’s a good one, happen to it. Awesome. How about a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Thomas Heffner
I mean I would be remiss if I didn’t say positive psychology. I spent years studying positive psychology. I think that’s my favorite thing to dive into. When I read books it’s typically around something positive psych oriented whether that’s gratitude or compassion or etcetera, etcetera. I think positive psychology is probably my jam if you will.

Probably my favorite practice or one of the things that I think is just really, really important is what I call – you’ve heard it in different things – but I call it hunt the good stuff, which is basically the three blessings exercise, whether you do it by yourself or whether you do it with your family. I like to do it with my family at dinner time, where we say, “Hey, what are three good things that happened today and why did that happen?”

That’s something that’s based out of research from positive psychology. It turns out that it has a pretty robust and lasting effect on your wellbeing, i.e. that makes you happier. It’s just something that we do every night. I love reading about those types of pop psych, social psych data, and research.

Pete Mockaitis
How about a favorite book?

Thomas Heffner
Book. Apropos of nothing that we’ve talked about, a book called Shantaram. Have you heard of it?

Pete Mockaitis
I don’t think I have. How do you spell this?

Thomas Heffner
S-H-A-N-T-A-R-A-M.

Pete Mockaitis
No.

Thomas Heffner
It’s by a guy named, if I get the name right, Gregory David – David Gregory Roberts or Gregory David Roberts. I can’t remember. But it’s a really cool – it’s a fictional book, but it’s kind of autobiographical as well.

It’s about this guy who was in academia. He was a Ph.D. student in philosophy. He gets into drugs like heroin and other things. Then he starts robbing banks. Gets caught, this is in Australia, and he flees – well, he gets caught, he goes to prison, then he breaks out of prison and he goes to Bombay and becomes –

He lives in the slums and runs in this world of the mafia, but also almost kind of like this patron saint, if you will, becomes – because he had some EMT training, there’s no doctors there, so he would help the people in the slums. He became this person everybody would bring their sick children or people to. It goes through this whole story.

There’s a lot of writing about you don’t know if it’s truly auto-biographical or what parts are fiction, but I think what’s really cool about it is – so being a psychology guy and being a positive psychology guy, this will come as no surprise, there’s a lot of philosophy that’s laden in this book with just gold nuggets of what does it mean, what does good and evil mean really, what does it mean to live a good life.

Just a really fantastic book. Great writing. Word of warning, it’s also I think about 999 pages long, so it’s not a short book, but I love the book.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, cool. Thank you. How about a favorite tool?

Thomas Heffner
Favorite tool. I love – I dig Canva. I don’t know if you ever use Canva.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, right the graphics.

Thomas Heffner
Yeah. For somebody that – I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to use Adobe Photoshop or Adobe InDesign, unless you have a Ph.D. in graphic design, I feel like those things are impossible to use or maybe it’s just me.

I really like Canva because I have to make different graphic designs and things like that periodically and I think Canva is just a really neat tool that in a way democratizes the graphic design for the rest of us non-designers.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. How about a favorite habit?

Thomas Heffner
Favorite habit. Here’s probably my favorite habit. I would say meditation or if meditation is not your jam, I also do coherent breathing. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of that.

Pete Mockaitis
I don’t think I’ve heard that exact pairing of words. I can guess what that means, but I’ll let you take it away. What does that mean?

Thomas Heffner
I say meditation because I’ve had a lot of great results and it’s helped me tremendously both kind of my psychological wellbeing as well as my physical wellbeing. But a lot of times people are like, “Look, I don’t like – I’m not a yogi, I’m not a Zen master. I don’t really want to do the whole meditation thing.” I just tell them, “Look, if that’s not your bag, if that’s not your jam, well then, just do some deep breathing.”

Just the act of deep belly breathing can be tremendously positive for your physical and emotional and psychological wellbeing. It’s called coherent breathing. If you Google coherent breathing, you’ll find different patterns and things like that. There’s a four-seven-eight pattern. You breathe in for a count of four, you hold for a count of seven, you exhale for a count of eight.

That’s not as important. I think the most important thing there is just you breathe out longer than you breathe in. It forces you to have these deep belly breaths that calm your nervous system and just – I’ve seen it first-hand where people are just really nervous.

I was up on a ropes course and the lady was freaking out. Her legs were shaking so much the platform was shaking. She was like, “Why is the platform shaking? Why is the platform shaking?” The instructor says, “Hey, well, take a look down.” She looks down. He’s like, “Your legs are shaking.” She’s like, “Oh.”

She’s super nervous. He says, “Look, just take some deep breaths.” She did that for two and a half minutes and I’m sure she was still nervous, but she wasn’t freaking out anymore.

That can be really, really helpful to help de-stress you, to help set the stage for a really good day if you do it in the morning. I always recommend do it the first thing when you wake up, do it may be over lunch time and do it right before you go to bed.

Pete Mockaitis
Awesome. Tell me, is there a particular nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks and they tend to repeat it, retweet it?

Thomas Heffner
I don’t know if it gets retweeted a lot, but I think one that connects with my listeners a lot is this idea of essentialism. You’ve probably heard of it in some fashion or form. But the idea of cutting out the non-essential in your life.

So many – now more than ever there is no shortage of things we could do, ideas we could pursue, etcetera, etcetera. Being able to cut through the non-essential to that one or maybe two things to pursue is really, really important if you want to be successful.

Pete Mockaitis
Tom, if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Thomas Heffner
Yeah, you can go to the Next Year Now Podcast website, which is NextYearNowPodcast.com or if you’re interested in learning more about design thinking and innovation, you can go to TomHeffner.com, which is my consulting site where I talk about the work that I do and the teaching that I do with design thinking and human centered design.

Pete Mockaitis
Do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Thomas Heffner
I would really say embrace that quote from Steven Colbert, “Learn to love the bomb,” because it will help you in all aspects of life, whether it’s work, whether it’s in relationships, whether it’s in friendships or sports or whatever it is. When you can embrace that – when you can embrace failure, when you can embrace bombing, you will be more successful than other people who can’t.

Pete Mockaitis
Awesome. Well, Tom, this has been a ton of fun. I wish you and the Next Year Podcast tons of luck and keep on rocking.

Thomas Heffner
Pete, thank you so much for having me on the show. I loved this conversation. I can’t wait until we get to catch up in person again soon.

Pete Mockaitis
Allen, thanks for joining us here on the How to Be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Allen Gannett
Thanks man. Thanks for having the best named podcast on the internet.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I appreciate that. I was kind of inspired by Ramit Sethi of I Will Teach You to Be Rich because it’s like, I know exactly what I’m getting from you. I like that clarity.

Allen Gannett
It’s like that movie Snakes on a Plane. It was about snakes on a plane.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. Oh, and it was a delight. Speaking – well, you’re a marketing guy, I loved what they did with. Samuel Jackson’s voice–calling people and leaving voice mails like, “Hey Allen, you’ve got to get your butt to see Snakes on a Plane.” I just thought that was the coolest thing.

Allen Gannett
I don’t remember that. That sounds – I need to go look that up. That’s amazing.

Pete Mockaitis
I hope it’s still live. It brought me such joy and probably a healthy return on investment that you could measure with TrackMaven.

Allen Gannett
This is true. This is true.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. Let’s get into it a little bit, but first I think we’ve got to hear about your Wheel of Fortune experience.

Allen Gannett
Oh my God. Yeah, I think this is one of those fun facts in the bio.

Yes, when I was 18 I decided – I had this phase where I was like I want to get cast on game shows. How hard could it be? I basically applied to all these different game shows and I got – there was a local audition for Wheel of Fortune, so I went. I never really watched Wheel of Fortune before. I decided instead of studying the puzzles I would instead study the contestants.

I watched like hours and hours and I played like the web game. I did all this different stuff to get a feel for it. What I realized about all the contestants that were on the show is that they weren’t all that good at puzzles; what they were good at is they were all bubbly and they all like enunciated really well.

Yeah, I went in and I did terrible on the actual like written test part, but when it came to do the audition, I did an Elmo impression, which I will never, ever do again and I think they were like, “Okay, this guy’s sufficiently crazy.” Yeah, I went on and I lost terribly. I lost to Joan from Alexandria, Virginia who won 60,000 dollars. I did not win that.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh.

Allen Gannett
I know.

Pete Mockaitis
I wonder where Joan is now and what she’s done with the money.

Allen Gannett
Joan, if you’re listening, if you’re listening, please send me a DM.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh that’s fun. That’s good. All right, cool.

I want to get into your book here, but first to get a little bit of back story, so you are the founder and CEO of TrackMaven, which is marketing analytics software. Can you give us a little bit of a feel for how your experience in that world informed your view of creativity and made you think that you need to write this book?

Allen Gannett
Yeah, I’ve been running TrackMaven for almost six years now. The thing that’s really interesting is so we work with a lot of really big brands to help them find the patterns in their marketing data, so like what are the things that you’re doing, what are the stories you’re telling, the products you’re focusing on, the messages, the audiences, what are those things that are actually driving results for your business.

What we’ve found is that there’s actually a lot of science behind this sort of marketing creativity. I’ve always had this sort of right brain/left brain sort of overlap view of creativity.

A few years ago I started noticing that when I would talk to the marketers we work with, they would say something like, “Well, I’m just not that creative.” I was like, “Uh, what?” “I’m not that way. I wasn’t born like Mozart. I’m not Steve Jobs.” I was like, “Um, but creativity is like this skill that you can develop and learn.” They’re like, “No, no, no. You either have it or you don’t.”

I’d always read a lot of autobiographies and I always read a lot of stories of creative genius. When you read the autobiographies and the memoirs and stories from these people, what’s clear is that they don’t feel like they were just born with it. They also don’t feel it was just the result of hard work. They feel like it was a result of a lot of smart work and a lot of intentionality.

I started giving this talk at marketing conferences all about how we need to get rid of this notion of the creative genius just sort of like walking out of the womb with all these talents and that being a reason why you can’t also be creative.

That’s spiraled into a book proposal, which spiraled into broadening the book to all creatives because the thing I realized as I started digging into the topic was that creativity is one of these things that is actually one of the most misunderstood concepts in popular culture. We all think we know what it is, but there’s actually been tons of new fascinating science and research about creativity that people don’t know about.

It’s actually at this point pretty well studied. We have a really good understanding of what causes people to like certain things, dislike other things, what are the underlying things in your brain that actually drive creative thinking. We have a lot of good science on this.

The book was this attempt to both a) debunk this sort of inspiration theory of creativity and 2) to paint a picture of okay, if creativity is something you can nurture and develop, well, how do you do it.

For that half of the book I interviewed about 25 living creative geniuses. These are like billionaires like David Rubenstein, startup people like Alexis Ohanian from Reddit, Kevin Ryan who did MongoDB, Gilt Business Insider, DoubleClick. Oscar winners. I did YouTube vloggers like Casey Neistat. I did Tony award winners, Emmy award winners, all these different people.

I found that there was these consistent things they did to enhance their creativity over and over again. The book I explain what those things are and I explain how you can do them too.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, yes. I want to dig into these practices, absolutely. But first I’m just so intrigued. Can you unpack a little bit some of the key things that are universal like what makes us like stuff and dislike stuff?

Allen Gannett
Yeah, what I found was really interesting when you dive into the research is that people have studied this question a few different fields. They’ve studied it in psychology, in sociology, in neuroscience. It all sort of converged on this thing where it turns out a big part of our preference is tied around these two urges we have.

The first urge is that as people we crave the familiar. We like things that we’re comfortable with, that we know are safe. This is very much a sort of evolutionary or reptilian effect where part of our job of our brain is to keep us safe.

If we see – if thousands of years ago we saw a cave we had never seen before, we sort of know, “Hm, we should probably avoid that thing.” We have this ability to really seek out the familiar. Like what is – think about your home, think about visiting your grandmother’s home. These places where you feel sort of safe. That’s one thing.

The second type of thing that affects preference, the second urge is that we also are really interested in things that are novel because we like the potential rewards. For example, in the hunter/gatherer days you’re looking for new berries, you’re looking for new sources of food. You’re constantly looking for that next thing.

But the problem is that these two urges, the craving for familiarity because of safety and the seeking of novelty because of potential reward, are in direct contradiction with each other. It almost makes no sense.

The thing is and what scientists found is that this is actually a really elegant way for our brain to balance things because let’s say for example you see a new berry in a field and it looks wildly different than any berry you’ve ever seen before. You should probably not eat it because it’s probably poisonous.

If on the other hand you see a berry that’s basically a bigger blueberry, it’s just a big, fat blueberry, you can probably go, “Okay, it’s probably fine. I’m going to try it out.” Your brain has this really graceful way of balancing familiarity and novelty.

What scientists found is what this relationship looks like is that the more we see something, the more we like it, but only up until a point. Once that point is reached then every time we see it we like it less and less and less. What they found is that there’s this inverse U relationship. There’s this bell curve. There’s this bell curve between exposure and preference.

In the book I call it the creative curve. It’s this relationship where your job as a marketer, as an entrepreneur, as someone who’s tasked with creating anything is to create ideas that have that right blend of familiarity and novelty.

Star Wars was literally a Western in space. It was familiar, but it was also novel. Harry Potter was a traditional rags to riches, orphan rises to greatness story, but it was told in this whole world around witches and wizards and magic in a way which many children’s books had never done before.

That combination of familiarity and novelty, that was the thing that really stuck out as one of these findings that has been so well researched, so well founded, so well supported, but we don’t really talk about that when we talk about creativity.

Pete Mockaitis
Intriguing. An inverse U, I guess I’m thinking of a lower case n, if you will, then how that unfolds. I don’t know who it was, a comedian or just one of my buddies who said, “Oh, that looks like something that I already know and love and yet is slightly different. I will try this new flavor of beef jerky.”

Allen Gannett
Yes. Totally.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. “I already like this brand of beef jerky and yet this is mesquite, so I am intrigued.” That connects and relates certainty to our experience.

I’m thinking about sort of like I guess startups that are really hits like Uber. It’s like, “You’re familiar with a cab? Okay. Well, hey, how about we just do that a little bit differently in a way that you find to be more convenient.”

Allen Gannett
When you think about – I think food trends are a great example of this. You saw, for example when Pink Berry rose to prominence. It was ice cream but it wasn’t. It was a little tangy. It was a little different. It was kind of healthy I guess. Now, obviously, it’s fallen from prominence.

Right now there’s that big trend going around of sort of the sushi burrito, like these giant, oversized sushi rolls. It’s something familiar. It’s sushi. It’s also something familiar. It’s a burrito. But it’s different. It’s a sushi burrito.

That’s one of those things that it was interesting because there’s all this science about it, but in the book I have a bunch of – have some quotes from some of the interviews and a lot of these creatives, they know this. They acknowledge this.

In fact I talk about this really fascinating study that this one professor did. He’s a professor of empirical musicology, which is a study of the math behind music. He did this study looking at how The Beatles used experimental song features over their career and it follows this U shape, where they use it more and more and as their audience started getting fatigued, they started using it less and less.

They always balanced the right balance of familiarity and novelty. They weren’t doing stuff that was too new. They weren’t doing stuff that was too old.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m also thinking about music there in terms of like if there’s a hit song on the radio or always just popping up again and again wherever you go. At first it’s like, “What is this? Oh no, eh.” Then it kind of grows on you, like, “Yeah, I dig this.” Then it’s like, “I’m sick of this. It’s everywhere. It’s just got to go. ”

Allen Gannett
Oh exactly. There’s actually a study in the book that literally did that in a scientific setting where they just played the same song over and over again. Again, there’s this U shaped relationship.

The first time you hear a new Drake song, you’re like, “Oh, okay.” The third time you’re like, “Oh, this is great.” The tenth time you’re like, “Please stop playing Hotline Bling” Then the twentieth time you’re like, “Why is this playing?”

You see this over and over again is that there’s this relationship. Things fall in and out of favor. If you’re going to master creativity, you have to first master that. You first have to master this curve.

Pete Mockaitis
I guess I’m wondering then, so let’s say you’re a professional. You are in an environment working with your folks, your colleagues day and day out. You need to come up with the big idea that’s going to, I don’t know, improve a process or be a new opportunity that we should chase after. How does one apply this principle in the trenches?

Allen Gannett
I think the biggest thing that you can apply from really sort of a micro-perspective is I think too often in business environments we focus on the novel. We focus on – we use words like innovation, brainstorming. We’re constantly trying to find these new, out-of-the-box ideas.

I think some of the most valuable innovation, especially in corporate America, actually comes from taking what’s already working and just updating, just doing those little tweaks, those little changes.

I think we have to get away from this idea that sort of originality and innovation are the key to success because that’s not actually what the science shows us. That’s not actually what history shows us. The things that are successful are actually oftentimes the things that are somewhat familiar. I think making that mind shift change is really important. I hate the word brainstorming. It’s like my least favorite word.

Pete Mockaitis
Is ideation also a no-no for you?

Allen Gannett
Ah, ah, you’re killing me Pete. Don’t say this. Stop.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I guess I’m thinking in terms of products. I guess you always think of Apple design and innovation and all those words. At the same time though the iPhone is kind of like, well, hey, it’s a phone and a music player and some internet goodies sort of in one.

It’s like you’ve got a thing in your pocket, maybe you have multiple things in your pocket, but you sort of put them all into one convenient package that looks great.

Allen Gannett
100%. You see this a lot – basically what you’re talking about is form factors. Form factors are a really common form of innovation because it’s the same actual functionality but in a different form factor.

Now we sort of joke about Tide pods because of the viral meme about people eating them, but before that they were a really successful product line because it was just taking detergent and making it easier to deal with.

It’s crazy because it’s literally just that – people I guess didn’t want to pour the detergent, but Tide pods were hugely successful just by changing the form factor. That’s all the change they made was. It wasn’t like some huge crazy innovation. It was just let’s put it in a little plastic dissolvable bag.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s true. That’s intriguing how you can also think about it in terms of a Tide pen, a Tide wipe.

Allen Gannett
Oh yeah, all these things. A Clorox wipe, it’s really the same thing.

Pete Mockaitis
A travel size or a jumbo size. That’s intriguing.

I’m almost sort of imagining sort of like a matrix or a spider diagram in terms of hey, form factor is one thing you can tweak a little bit on one axis or dimension. What are some others in terms of hey, form factor is one variable, size is another, what else?

Allen Gannett
It really depends on the creative field obviously. With consumer packaged goods, form factor is obviously one that’s pretty common. Brand’s another one that’s pretty common.

Oftentimes you’ll see this for example when people are writing novels, they oftentimes will use really traditional story arcs. There’s actually all this interesting research about story arcs. There’s like these six recurring story arcs that people always use. People will take that same story arc and then they’ll add their own characters, their own genre.

Sometimes people will innovate on the actual story arc and add like a weird twist or a sort of a surprise ending, but actually more traditionally successful types of art are taking the standard structures and formulas and they’re working off of that. Much more common is you see people using the standard sort of structure of formula in art and working off that.

Most successful radio songs are three minutes. There are the occasional songs, I guess like Bohemian Rhapsody that’s like forever and that are successful from a sort of popular perspective, but those are the exception, not the norm. Typically you actually have to really focus on what are going to be the things you do that are similar to the baseline not wildly different.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Now, one of the key pieces in your book is coming up with the right idea at the right time. You talked about this curve. Any thoughts in terms of the timing? Do you play the game a little bit different if it’s played out in super familiar versus, oh, it seems more novel?

Allen Gannett
Yeah, I think the thing you need to recognize is you need to learn how to listen to your audience to identify where your idea is and whether or not you can change it or pivot it to the right place because you need to be at that blend of familiar and novel, that right perfect blend to really take off.

In the book I talk about these four things these highly successful, creative people do. One of them that I was surprised by is that they all engage in a highly data driven iterative process. I don’t mean data necessarily purely in the data way, although some do, but I mean some sort of systematic rigorous process of creating, testing, editing, reediting, recreating, sort of doing that over and over and over again.

For example, I talk about how I spent a day with the Ben & Jerry’s flavor development, which was like a really fun, delicious day for lots of reasons.

One of the things that I thought was so interesting was you have these people who are like experts in ice cream, they’re experts in flavor, they’re former chefs, they’re food scientists, but the biggest thing, the most important thing for them that they do is every year they come up with a list of 200 flavor ideas and they survey their audience.

They literally send – they have an email newsletter. They send a survey to a subset of the people in the email newsletter. They just ask two questions. The two questions are 1) how likely are you to buy this flavor and 2) how unique is this flavor. They’re basically asking how familiar is it and how novel is it.

The reason why that’s so important is because what they want to do is if they create too many things that are too familiar, that are – people say, “Oh, I love that,” that are similar to things they already like, well, you’ll end up with a whole line of brownie and cookie flavors, which sounds good, but will eventually make the brand feel stale.

If you just focus on novelty, you’ll just get a bunch of flavors that are like crazy, but no one will actually buy them when they see them on the shelf, even if they taste good. They use data to winnow down those initial gut ideas into ideas that they feel have a high degree of success based on listening to their audience.

So much of creativity, so much about doing anything creative is about nailing that for your audience. I think it’s amazing how little we actually listen to our audience.

That was one of the things I thought was most surprising was we have this vision of these great creatives like going off into a cabin in the woods and creating these things and then returning with a finished product. In reality creatives interviewed, they love getting audience feedback because they’re creating for the audience.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. I’m intrigued. Those two questions then is it like a 400 item survey then if there’s 200 flavors and oh dang.

Allen Gannett
Yeah, it’s like a whole production.

Pete Mockaitis
Those are the committed ice cream-

Allen Gannett
Yeah. No I think they split it up, but yeah people get into Ben & Jerry’s. They have a big email list. You’d be shocked.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s very intriguing. I remember one of the first times I had this ah-ha was when I was – I don’t know how it happened. I was with my buddy, Conner, shut up. We were watching The Simpsons movie DVD commentary. I don’t know. It just happened that day.

Allen Gannett
It happens.

Pete Mockaitis
What occurred again and again in the commentary was the creators would talk about, “Oh, hey before in this scene we did this joke, but that didn’t work. Originally we did this, but that didn’t work.”

Allen Gannett
Totally.

Pete Mockaitis
“We tried it out,” and this and that. I was like wait a second. From my perspective as a consumer, okay this is just a silly cartoon movie, but from behind the curtain with the creative folk going after it, it’s like test it, test it, test it. It’s like, yeah.

Allen Gannett
Comedy is so fascinating. Standup comedy, I profile a standup comedian in the book. Standup comedy I think is one of the most interesting examples of this because they literally get on stage and their whole shtick is they’re supposed to look like they’re organic and jokey.

But literally if you ever watch the new Seinfeld special on Netflix, they have this scene where he’s sitting in the middle of a park and they took out all of his yellow legal pads of jokes that he’s written throughout his entire career and it fills the entire park.

Because the whole thing in standup comedy is what they actually do is they’re constantly writing down little ideas and then all these standup comedians, even the big ones are constantly going to small comedy shows to – they call it working out a joke because they want to get the every little pause and facial expression, they want to get that all nailed.

By the time it’s going in their comedy special a year from now, they’ve been practicing and testing and getting that joke just right for them to deliver it on air recorded. Then they mostly throw out the jokes they’ve done for their special and they do the whole thing over again.

Standup comedy is actually one of the most practiced, rehearsed, written types of creativity, but we think of it as this organic thing. It’s like, no, that’s not how it works. These people don’t just come up and start cracking jokes.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. I remember I always wondered when I was watching standup comedy, it’s like that joke is not at all connected to the previous joke. It feels like if this were a conversation, there would be a segue or whatever. It’s like, “Well, what can I tell you. I’ve got a bunch of jokes that are winning and they didn’t happen to be connected to each other, so this is what you got.”

Allen Gannett
Yeah, have fun.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so that’s one great process there in terms of the laws of creative success and you share a couple others. Can you reveal them for us?

Allen Gannett
Yeah, of course. In the book there’s these four laws of the creative curve. One I already mentioned obviously is iterations and these highly iterative processes, so all these creators do that. The other three, the first one is consumption.

One of the things I thought was so interesting is that we think of creators as constantly doing, as constantly putting stuff out there, but all the creators I interviewed actually spend a lot of time consuming information in their vertical.

I explain in the book why. I explain why they do that. But that was one of the things I thought was so fascinating. There’s a huge amount of time consuming information in their vertical.

The second thing is that, again, we talk about this sort of originality myth, but every single one I interviewed talked about at some level how they spend time imitating the greats. Imitation is a huge part of the creative process. The second law is imitation.

The reason why is that there’s these common structures, these common ways in which creative products are presented to an audience. When you have to balance familiarity and novelty, knowing those structures is very, very important to create the familiar.

The third one and the one that I think is probably the most important and the one that’s often underappreciated and misunderstood is creative communities. We have this sort of myth of the solo genius. The idea that there’s these creatives like Steve Jobs, Elon Musk and they’re doing these things all by themselves.

This is so far from the truth. It’s so destructive because so much of creativity is a social phenomenon. You have to create work that other people recognize as creative. They have to tell people about it. People have to agree that it’s creative.

When you actually look at these stories, like look Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, he had investors. He had employees who worked for him. There’s all these people involved. In the book I break down the different types of people you need to have in your creative community.

But one of the ones that people always sort of forget about is all the creative geniuses I interviewed have what I call prominent promoter, someone who gives them and lends them credibility because if you are creative and no one ever hears about your work, sure your work may be technically proficient, but from an academic perspective, it’s actually not creative.

Creative work by definition has to be recognized as creative. People have to see it in order for it to be labeled as such. Having people who lend you credibility, who lend you air time, who do that is actually incredibly important.

The sort of social construct around creativity is one of the things that I thought was really interesting when you dive into creativity because if I asked you, “Hey Pete, is that painting creative?” It’s actually a hard question to answer because if you’re looking at a painting of the Mona Lisa, well if you’re looking at a new one today that’s an exact reproduction well, you’d say, “Well, it’s not creative.”

Okay, but what makes the original one creative? There’s other paintings from a similar time period that are just as well painted and just as interesting. There’s actually a really big social phenomenon aspect around creativity that really is actually an important sort of nuance to understand.

Pete Mockaitis
I like that turn of phrase prominent promoter. I’m just imagining sort of like a … man like, “Yeah dog. What he said. Oh, that’s so good.” What are a couple other key roles?

Allen Gannett
A couple other ones are – the other one is a master teacher. All the creatives I interviewed had someone who is a world-class expert as a teacher not just sort of middling level.

The prominent promoter and the master teacher, sometimes people find them in one as like a mentor but I think it’s important to break those two because they’re actually two separate roles. For a lot of people those came from two separate people.

The other one is what I call conflicting collaborators. Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs are a great example of this, where Steve Jobs didn’t want to design his computers. Steve Wozniak did not want to go around selling them.

Oftentimes we talk about these people as okay, they’re the face of it, they’re the name, they’re the genus, but they also have all done a good job of acknowledging their weaknesses and bringing other people in who conflict with them, who have those different talents to actually get to where they want to go.

That is so, so, so important because if you buy this myth that it’s all about you, it’s just about this one person and you have to do it by yourself, you’re never going to get there. You’re never going to get there and frankly, you probably shouldn’t because you’re going to need to learn how to engage with other people to really once you have a great product to actually get distribution.

The final one of the four types of people in a creative community is what I call a modern muse. What you find with these creative people is that they often surround themselves with people who inspire and motivate them. They’re not necessarily like a teacher or a mentor.

But for example, I interviewed a couple of really popular YouTube vloggers. I interviewed Casey Neistat and Connor Franta, who probably combined have like 20 or 25 million subscribers, like a lot.

What was interesting was that all of them would surround themselves, their friends, their friend group with other creators, other YouTube creators, other people and would keep them motivated, to keep them pushing, to give them that energy and it also gave them that friendly competition. It gave them that push of saying, “Okay, he or she did that, so I want to do that too.” They inspired each other. They did that.

Those four elements were incredibly important to have. Even missing one of those can be fatal to creative success.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, cool. Thank you.  I also want to dig in a little bit. You talk a bit about neuroscience and what it has to say about inspiration and ah-ha moments. What are some tidbits there?

Allen Gannett
Yeah, one of the most amazing things is that ah-ha moments, these flashes of genius we have that we think of as so magical are actually really well studied, Pete. People know, we know a lot about why they happen and all of that stuff.

The thing is that as people we can’t explain it. Oftentimes for things we can’t explain ourselves we ascribe sort of like magic, like it’s unexplainable. It’s not unexplainable. It’s actually pretty simple.

We have two different types of processing that go on in our brain. One is logical processing the other is sudden insight.

Logical processing happens in our left hemisphere. It’s very step-by-step. It’s like when you solve a math problem or work out a word puzzle letter by letter. It’s all conscious. You’re aware as the steps are going through. You know it’s happening.

The other type of processing is sudden insight. This happens in your right hemisphere. This type of processing is all subconscious. This is more connecting dissonant ideas together. Only once the answer comes together and three’s sort of like the left hemisphere is quiet enough, only then do you actually consciously experience these things.

That’s why we have this idea of sudden insight because these ideas suddenly pop out of consciousness but that doesn’t mean they’re magical. They’re in your right hemisphere and in fact this is why you have these so much when you’re in the shower or a lot of these stories people were in bed or they’re on a train or they’re on a commute is because in these moments your left hemisphere has sort of quieted down.

You kind of think about your left hemisphere and your right hemisphere as your left hemisphere is your noisy lab partner who won’t shut up about working through the problem and your right hemisphere is your quiet, smart lab partner who’s like working through and they say like, “Hey, I got the answer. I got the answer,” but you can’t actually hear them say it until your noisy lab partner kind of shuts up.

The thing is that since it’s really just a different type of processing, we actually have pretty good insight into how to have more of them. It’s more complicated than this and I explain in the book. But the short version is that if you want to have more sudden insight, you need to do two things.

One, obviously, you need to have the time, the sort of quiet time for your left hemisphere to sort of be settled. The second thing, the thing most people miss, this is why consumptions were in the laws, is you need to consume a large amount of information. You have to have the raw ingredients in your right hemisphere to actually connect.

I experienced this in the book where I’m reading thousands and thousands of pages of peer-reviewed research on creativity and so when I have ah-ha moments in the shower or whatever, I’m having ah-ha moments about these really dorky creativity concepts. If I hadn’t been reading all that, I wouldn’t have had those moments.

People are like, “Well, J.K. Rowling had these ideas for Harry Potter,” but she also spent her entire childhood reading because she had this chaotic household and she wanted to get away from it. Yeah, those are the raw ingredients in her brain. Those are the things that were percolating around.

Pete Mockaitis
I like that notion in terms of the quiet. I’m finding – we had a great podcast conversation with Dr. Michael Breus talk about optimal timing and our ultradian rhythms and neurotransmitters and goodies kind of internally biochemically you’re kind of predisposed to functioning in one or the other place better.

For me, I see it all the time, I actively sort of schedule my workday around it, sudden insights, creative goodies happen in the earlier part of the morning and then logical processing happens when I am kind of more fully woken up, breakfast and cruising.

I kind of deliberately try to schedule, “Oh, I’m going to write something for the early morning and then I’m going to categorize all these tax transactions in the later part of the day.” My brain is happier having the task match up what is required from it in the state that it happens to be in.

Allen Gannett
Totally.

Pete Mockaitis
Well this is so cool, so good. Allen, tell me anything you really want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things.

Allen Gannett
No, that was great. I think that the one thing that I worry about is that the book is saying that there is science and a path towards creative success. Pete, I’m not saying it’s easy. I think that’s a really important thing. In fact, I think it’s incredibly hard.

I think oftentimes we sort of think because it’s like a luck-based thing that, “Well, I don’t have it so I have an excuse not to try.” I actually want to challenge people. I think you can do it but you do have to try, you do have to lean in, you do have to really, really push yourself if you want to achieve that.

It’s not that I’m saying it’s easy. Actually, it’s really, really hard, but there is a path. That I think is an important thing to know.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, cool. Thank you. Now can you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Allen Gannett
Oh my God. I have so many. I love Ben Horowitz book, The Hard Thing About Hard Things. I mean there’s like 500 quotes in there that I just think are – speak to me so much because I think at the end of the day if you haven’t read that book, it’s a book by Ben Horowitz, who’s one of the early employees of Netscape and he went on to found Andreessen Horowitz.

He talks about sort of the – he talks about what it’s like to be an entrepreneur in a way that I think is very authentic and real. The big point he makes is that the stuff isn’t easy. It’s not simple. It’s not straightforward. There aren’t silver bullets. I just think that message really resonates with me.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh beautiful. How about a favorite study or experiment or a bit of research?

Allen Gannett
Oh, I think anyone who gets into creativity will tell you that the study Robert Zajonc did the mere exposure effect study a long, long time ago. It has such a big influence in marketing and neuroscience and creativity research.

Basically the finding was that people’s exposure actually has a pretty big relationship on whether or not they like something. From there we’ve sort of gone down the rabbit hole and there’s been all this fascinating research around preference and likeability. That study started the whole thing.

Basically it’s kind of cute. He showed people these fake Chinese characters. They didn’t mean anything. Then he showed it to people different numbers of times and would ask them a) how positive or negative they thought it was and how much they liked it.

It’s really funny because people are like – people actually have opinions on it. “Oh, that’s a positive meaning word.” It turns out how that often people see it does affect it.

Pete Mockaitis
How about a favorite tool, something that helps you be awesome at your job?

Allen Gannett
Oh my God. I love Boomerang. I’m one of those people who tends to write emails at like 1 AM in the morning. I don’t want to be that obnoxious person or obnoxious boss who’s sending emails at 1 AM, so scheduling stuff for 9 AM is like – keeps me sane and makes people think I’m sane, which is good. We want people to think that.

Pete Mockaitis
But you just ousted yourself. We all know that you’re not sane.

Allen Gannett
Yeah, I know. Everyone’s like why do these emails come right at 9 AM.

Pete Mockaitis
How about a favorite habit?

Allen Gannett
For me every Saturday I take an incredibly long walk with the dog. It’s one of those times where it’s just like – I just think. I have that moment. I have that breath. I have that pause sort of in life. It gives me a chance to check in with my body. I can sort of feel is something wrong. Am I anxious? Am I tense? Usually we may stop and get a doughnut along the way. It’s a delicious habit.

Pete Mockaitis
How about a key nugget that you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks when you say it?

Allen Gannett
I think the biggest think I’ve realized just in running a business is that everyone you work with is so human, people on my board, the people we sell to, the people who work here. Everyone is so human with flaws and contradictions and messy feelings.

I think as you come to realize that it really opens up your mind to how to interact with the world, how to interact with other companies and customers, and prospects, and all these different people because you realize that you need to treat people with the sort of respect and dignity that you treat any new friend or any new human you meet.

That for me has been a really powerful experience personally and something that I think has benefited other people.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m intrigued. Dig into that a bit in terms of have you shifted your behavior in terms of how you’re interacting with folks based upon this kind of core premise?

Allen Gannett
Yeah, I mean the thing is I tend to treat people with respect but as peers and I think it tends to be the biggest impact, especially for someone who is younger, is not overly formalizing things. I think you realize as you sort grow in your career that if you make everything overly formal, people don’t really want to work with you or interact with you. I think that’s a very common mistake that people make early in their careers.

Pete Mockaitis
If folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Allen Gannett
My website is Allen.xyz. That’s A-L-L-E-N-.-X-Y-Z. You can check out the book at TheCreativeCurve.com. It comes out June 12^th everywhere books are sold.

Pete Mockaitis
Do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks seeking to be awesome at their job?

Allen Gannett
My call to action for all of you is that every single day when you walk in, know that if you are responsive, if you are responsible and you get done what you say you’re going to get done, you will outpace, outshine 95% of the people you work with.

If you’re building a team, you want to build a team of people who are all performing at that level and that’s where the magic happens. That’s where you get the lift. That’s where you can really step back and see a team grow.

Pete Mockaitis
Usually that’s the final word for that, I must know more. Tell me then, it seems like that seems foundational, “Yes, but of course I should do the things that I say I’m going to do.” Can you unpack a little bit in terms of common practice versus what you’re saying is an exceptional practice that makes an exceptional difference?

Allen Gannett
Yeah, the thing is that as people we’re busy. We get tired. We generally have a tendency towards homeostasis. We don’t actually always want to put in that extra incremental 10% effort. I know for me sometimes I’m tired. I don’t want to respond that email. I don’t want to do these things.

Those little actions, those actions that seem so small and inconsequential that you can write them off, that’s actually where the magic happens. That’s actually where high-performing teams happen because when the basics, when the foundations are taken for granted, when they’re assumed that you got that done, that’s when you can focus on the big stuff.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Well, Allen, this has been a lot of fun. I wish you and TrackMaven and The Creative Curve tons of luck and success here.

Allen Gannett
Thanks man, I appreciate it.

Pete Mockaitis
Edgar, thanks for joining us here on the How To Be Awesome At Your Job podcast.

Edgar Papke
Well, thanks. Yeah, it’s a real pleasure to spend time with you.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, boy, I think we’re going to have a lot of fun. And I was intrigued digging into your background. So you’ve got three albums of music, whether it’s a singer or a songwriter, a degree in Culinary Arts, and you do a whole lot of the speaking/consulting workshop thing. I want to get your take on, what is it that you delight in within these kind of different-seeming fields, and is there a common thread that really kind of works with you and how your brain functions?

Edgar Papke
Yeah, very much so. I think right at the core of it is a common thread that runs through just about all of my work and anything that I do, both professionally as well as pursue artistically – is art, it’s creativity, and just allowing myself to explore and discover and express creatively, is that common thread. And then around that there is this desire to learn and explore. So whether it’s learning to play a musical instrument better, learn how to sing better, or how to create a great dish in the kitchen, or writing a book – to me it’s all a creative process and a learning process. So there’s always the learning that goes with it, which just fascinates me.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that is good. And I didn’t think we’d go deep on here, but I have to touch upon it. So right now as you talk about the learning and how that’s sort of intrinsically enjoyable to you, I guess the first thing I thought about was Carol Dweck’s fixed mindset versus growth mindset, and how it seems like you are just very comfortably situated in a growth mindset. Well, you tell me – it sounds like you’re not stressing if the dish you create is terrible, or the instrument you play sounds harsh and shrill and annoying to anyone who’s within earshot. You’re just digging the growth. Any perspectives you have, in terms of how you keep that kind of alive, or does it just come totally naturally to you?

Edgar Papke
Yeah, I think there’s that aspect of it, and there’s I think an ongoing conversation about letting people fail in the business world and in organizations. And I don’t really think of a moment in time or an outcome as ever being a failure; not much anymore. I think I used to do that much more when I was younger. I’ve come around to the idea that everything that I do is a prototype of one type or another, and so it’s not so much a failure as an outcome. And the outcome is just another step along the way.

I know it may sound corny to call it all one long journey, yet it is. And so every time I endeavor into something I’m willing to do it and then let go of it into the world and just keep moving on with it. And yeah, I’ve done a lot of things that just somebody would look at and say, “That’s kind of crazy” or, “That’s not perhaps as good as it could be.” And yet for me as long as I’m trying my best and as long as I’m putting something out there that I can continuously improve from – that makes me happy, and I do think that that’s part of the human endeavor – that ability to pursue knowledge, to create, to expand our personal and social horizons. I think that’s a necessity of the quality of human nature.

Pete Mockaitis
I dig it, I dig it. The human experience – it’s starting deep. And even that turn of phrase – I think I’m going to stick with that in my own personal life and viewpoint. Everything I do is a prototype, because just the word “prototype”, at least for me… I don’t know, I have already just fantastic connotations of a prototype, is one – progress. It’s like, “Hey, I’ve got a prototype.” “Cool, let me try it out. Let me take a look.” Once you go from an idea or a rough sketch to a prototype, equals progress. And at the same time it implies unfinished-ness. So, at least for me, it’s hitting my emotional cords just right to say everything I do is a prototype, because it is simultaneously cool progress, but also unfinished, and nobody should expect it to be finished. It’s just a prototype, so chill out about it.

Edgar Papke
Yeah, and that’s what attracted me initially to the ideas around design thinking, because design is change, it’s art, it’s a creative approach to solving problems or using an idea. And I think that’s what design thinking and my work with Tom has been all about – the co-author Thomas Lockwood of the book. I know he’s extremely, extremely creative, and he’s also very logical and sequential in his thinking. I lean much more towards the creative side, the freewheeling side; yet in my personality there’s always this quest to be more competent, to try and master something and get something to a certain point, and knowing that whatever point I get to is just another stepping stone moving it forward.

That’s what design thinking is really all about in an organizational context. We don’t really get hooked or get too rigid about anything that we’re doing or an outcome that we have. Rather we keep seeking a better or a more advanced way of doing something or creating something.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so then the design thinking – this term has come up a couple of times on the show. But I’d love to hear your crack at it. How would you sort of define this term? If someone says “design thinking”, what is that generally referred to?

Edgar Papke
And in the book we talk about this as the collective imagination and what design thinking brings out is just who we all are as human beings, and that’s our creative capability. So design thinking in and of itself is looking at a problem or looking at a situation very contextually, and looking at it in a holistic way and starting a conversation of what’s possible. And from there it leads into more process or systemic ways of coming at that in organizations.

One of the things that we really enjoy is some predictability of how things are going to get done, and design thinking gives people permission in organizations and in teams and groups – it gives them permission to be more creative, to express themselves more freely, to pursue knowledge and ideas in different ways. That pretty much in a lot of organizations gets dampened, it gets suppressed by wanting too much process. And really in and of itself it’s kind of an interesting dynamic, because you’re applying a predictability or a process to more unpredictability, more creativity, more freewheeling thinking, an idea generation.

So design thinking in and of itself – it’s an approach, it’s a process, and it’s a mindset; it’s a way of thinking. Much like you and I have been talking about it, it leans much more into possibility-thinking than it does into restricting or being rigid about our way of thinking or seeing the world.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, thank you. And so then, your book here – Innovation by Design – you lay out some perspectives and practices that can unleash great creative and innovative things in organizations. So, I’d love to hear the sort of top level thesis, in terms of, ultimately what is the distinction or the key to go about tapping into and leveraging more great innovation?

Edgar Papke
It’s an excellent question, and what comes to mind immediately for me, and one of the things that we looked at through the lens in doing research for the book, is the connection between design thinking and creative thinking in organizations and their cultures. When we look at high-level what we do, there’s always a “What” and then there’s an emotional driver of “Why” behind it. Then we start getting into the “How” part of it.

And culture really is all about how things get done and what’s expected of people in terms of their behavior, what’s acceptable or unacceptable. And I think one of the keys here is to really be able to understand how problems get solved, how decisions get made, how conflicts get managed in an organization, and how its culture informs people about how to go do that, and then be able to understand how design thinking as an approach, as a process both fits a culture, as well as can move a culture. And what I mean by “move it” is in positive and more innovative ways.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, I love how you say it’s so important… Well, you didn’t say it, but I think you believe it, that it’s important to have some clarity associated with those areas – how decisions get made, how problems get solved. And I’m having flashbacks to consulting work at Bain & Company, in which we used a tool called the “RAPID framework” for decision-making, like who has what role for a given decision – who makes a recommendation, who approves it, who performs it, who provides input, who ultimately owns the decision. So it’s the acronym RAPID. And I found that so helpful, because in some organizations there are some decisions that are quite fuzzy – it’s wildly unclear who really has the decision. Everyone’s kind of concerned about covering their rears…

Edgar Papke
That’s the same thought I just had, was in some instances people don’t want to make the decision.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, certainly.

Edgar Papke
Because of potential consequences.

Pete Mockaitis
And so they rope more and more and more people in to provide input, such that it’s like someone can be blamed or whatever. So, I’ve seen in my own working life how bringing clarity to decision-making is fantastically helpful and useful, in terms of the, “How does this given decision get made?” Could you search with us a little bit in terms of how do problems get solved? Could you maybe lay out the menu of options associated with, “Hey, in some organizations problems get solved in this kind of way; and others in that kind of way”?

Edgar Papke
Yeah, and we break it down in my previous work through True Alignment, we break it down into three distinct types of cultures. And so, from that, you can use those as a springboard to see how decisions are made in different ways. One culture we call a “participation culture”, which is very collaborative, and so decisions are much more driven… Leaders don’t own a decision as much as a group does, and so there’s much more of a collaboration consensus-building and a quest towards agreement within the group as to what the best path is, not just to buy in; rather to gain a high level of commitment to the decision and the outcome that’s being reached.

That’s different than an “expertise culture”, where decisions are generally driven by those that either have the authority, or by way of establishing and demonstrating their competency, that they’re given the power influence to make decisions. So it’s less of a collaboration process; it’s more of, we either turn to the experts, we turn to the people with the authority, whatever it happens to be.

And then there’s also a third one, which is “authenticity cultures”. And there’s a great degree of personal empowerment that takes place, so decision-making can be driven very rapidly by individuals in whatever situation that they’re in because they feel empowered and they’re given the right or they’re expected to make the decision at a very personal level.

So you can hear there are some distinct differences. And it’s interesting to note that those elements become very important in terms of how problems get solved as well. Do we collectively come together, do we turn to experts or have one or two people solve a problem for us because we deem them to be the most competent, or is it a matter that everyone gets to explore and learn and everybody gets to take risks? So even risk-taking takes on different definitions.

What is interesting about that is that very often leaders don’t pay enough attention to that in organizations, and so there’s a degree of disconnect. In other words, in an expertise culture sometimes a leader will say, “Well, I want people to feel empowered, I want them to make decisions”, etcetera. Yet the reality is that people are constantly seeking permission or going to one or two people in the organization to solve most of their problems and make decisions for them. So it’s very interesting how often leaders and mangers don’t really know how to interpret their culture, and don’t really have a map for it.

Pete Mockaitis
Right. Well, that’s very thought-provoking, and I could chew on that for a while. But I’d instead maybe like to zoom in on… In your book you lay out 10 attributes that sort of facilitate great innovation. And as I peruse them, it seems like a number of them are maybe helpful at sort of the more senior leadership level – and correct me if I’m mischaracterizing anything – and others seem like that’s something absolutely any professional can do, no matter their stature or authority or absence or presence of direct reports. So, could you share maybe a couple of the practices that are amongst the most actionable and universal for all professionals?

Edgar Papke
Yeah, I think all 10 of them are accessible to anybody in any part of the organization or at any level of an organization, at least from an understanding perspective. The first one that we talk about in the book – “design thinking at scale” – has a tendency… We probably look at it from atop of the organization, say, “Well, how do we train and how do we move design thinking or the process of design thinking through an organization?”

And yet we find that the organizations, and those in our study group in the book, that do it exceptionally well, are the ones that engage everyone in the organization in learning the process of design thinking – how to look at a situation with empathy through say a customer’s eyes or another person in the organization, their eyes, and what the context that they’re in, and be able to solve problems well at that level. So I think that they’re all accessible and it really has a great degree to do with how leadership approaches it and how it moves through an organization.

That being said, I think the ones that really step out most often for anyone to be able to use are, one is the attribute of curious confrontation, because as we well know from our experiences, just about everybody struggles with how to manage conflict effectively, especially in the workplace. Conflict is an ongoing challenge that we all have as human beings. And curious confrontation is really taking a look at the term itself “confrontation”, meaning to face the truth.

I don’t have to have a solution to a problem or have a solution to a conflict that I’m in with someone or within a group. What I do need to be able to do is to step into it and to be able to say, “There is something we need to talk about here. There is a conflict, there’s a disparity in the way that we see or think about things, and let’s have a conversation.”

And the curiosity element is the one that says that there’s a desire to explore, a desire to investigate, a desire to peel away the layers in the conflict and see what’s really at the core and what the core problems are. So, anyone in an organization can actually learn to confront through inquiry and to ask questions, as opposed to always just stepping into everything with an answer. And that in and of itself is very, very powerful for any of us to engage in, whether it’s in the workplace or in our personal lives.

And also the aspect of co-creation – just a simple idea that we rely on one another in our creative process. In other words, great innovation and creativity is the building of one idea upon another. And it goes back to earlier in our conversation about prototype – “Here’s one idea; let’s build on the idea.” And so this idea of co-creation is really leaning into including people around us in ways that we probably haven’t done before, and asking them to help us to be creative in solving problems or finding new paths to innovating at higher levels.

And so much of what we do, we have a tendency to just look at our own world or live in our own world, whether it’s at work or in other parts of our lives, without really reaching out or opening up to engaging others in creating and finding solutions to the problems that we have. So the idea of co-creation and opening up to that, I think is a wonderful attribute for anyone to have as an individual and to be able to use.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, I’d like to hear a couple of things here. When it comes to curious confrontation, I guess a couple of things are coming to mind. And one – a friend of a friend mentioned that he or she had a coworker who would often just shoot out an email note like, “Several of my comments have not been integrated into the document.” So, this person did not have a solution, which is I guess pros and cons. Some folks will say, “Don’t bring me a problem without a solution”, and you’re saying it can be totally cool to say, “No, I don’t know the answer yet, but we’re going to engage in a curious confrontation, and that’s cool.”

And then I guess there are other times when someone just makes an observation like that – it’s like, “I don’t know what you want me to say or do, or this doesn’t really warrant any conversation time right here or now.” It’s sort of like, “Should I drop everything and say ‘Yes, you’re right. I looked at your comments and I determined that they did not in fact strengthen the document, given these rationales.’”

And so I guess at times I’m thinking that could be very helpful for folks to learn and grow and develop and get more tuned into the brain and the goal of the leadership, and getting sharpened and strengthened and challenged. And the flipside – that could just take a whole lot of time for that. Is that really a smart use of resources? So, how’s that for a curious confrontation? I’m just going to drop that in your lap, Edgar. What do you think of that?

Edgar Papke
Well, several thoughts crossed my mind as I’m listening to you, so let me go back to the beginning and then work my way through it. The first one is, a lot of times people use this statement: “Don’t just bring me a problem; bring me a solution.” Unfortunately, if I don’t have a solution, and that’s the price of admission for us to have a conversation, we’re going to have a hard time talking about things. My preference is always to – and I coach leaders to do this directly – is, stay away from that part of, “If there’s a problem and you want to talk to me about it, bring me a solution”, is probably better delivered by just changing it slightly to, “If you identify a problem and you want to talk about it, let’s talk about it. I’d like you to find a solution or think about possible solutions. If you can’t come up with anything, let’s talk anyway.”

I think we’ve got to always have the door wide open as leaders to engage in coaching and learning with the people around us. And so, “Bring me a solution” – I like the idea of, “Try and bring me a solution. If you can’t, let’s talk anyway.” Because a lot of times problems don’t get surfaced because people are afraid to talk about them, because they’re going to be seen in a light as not smart enough or not competent enough or not doing enough about it. So that in and of itself I think can be problematic.

Going back to your example – your example is a really good one. So somebody shoots off some emails and they’re not responded to. There’s three things that everybody always wants – it’s human nature. And this is also what wraps around the idea of the collective imagination and who we are as human beings and how we innovate. And one of them is that we all want to be heard, we all want to feel a part of it, be acknowledged. And when we’re not acknowledged, we feel ignored, and that’s very problematic.

So I think if somebody’s sending emails and they’re not responded to, and they raise the issue, rather than have a quick come-back for it or have an answer, sometimes it’s just simply to ask somebody and open up to the idea of what’s important to them – to say, “Okay, yes, I didn’t respond – let’s speak truthfully here – I didn’t respond. And let’s talk about what’s important to you – about this issue or about your ideas.”

And if I did, by the way – like in your scenario – if I did take a look at the emails and I didn’t think they were good ideas, then it’s probably a little bit of a problem why I didn’t communicate back with you. So a lot of times I think it’s also a matter of being responsible to our relationships and to be able to do what we need to, to respond in a human way, to not ignore, to pay attention. And very often rather than if somebody does confront us with an issue or we have to talk to somebody about something, I think inquiries about being able to open up the conversation to, “Help me to understand what’s important to you about this, and what your ideas are and what might work and what might not.”

I think there’s not just only a coaching opportunity for leaders in these kinds of conversations. I think just with coworkers, I think it’s important to recognize that if we take the time to build relationships at the level that we need to, then a lot of the time that we spend in dysfunctional conflict and not being able to talk about things or having to go back and fix things – I think we can avoid those. We can move past those much more quickly if we have a good ongoing relationship. And that does take time; it’s like any other great relationship – take the time upfront and you’ll save a lot of time down the road.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Edgar, I appreciate that and I think you have a kindness and generosity about you in that response. And I guess my knee-jerk reaction in hearing this story relayed, I was thinking, “Who expects to have 100% of their comments integrated into any document ever?” It’s kind of like the nature of the beast, is that when you have a lot of cooks in the kitchen, some of your ideas will stick and some of them won’t, and it might be a little unrealistic for a person to just sort of say, “Not all of my comments made it into the document”, as an expectation.

But you’re saying, to paraphrase, it sounds like maybe that relationship isn’t at the strongest – that they feel ignored, hurt, unseen, and thus, this is sort of like a request to address that matter. And so there could very well be some “valid, deep-seeded” things, in terms of their beliefs and values and input that are not getting acknowledged, as opposed to, this is just an annoying coworker who has unrealistic expectations who needs to get over it.

Edgar Papke
You’ve just really touched on something really powerful, and that’s the idea of expectations. One of the things that we generally don’t do well enough in any relationship, especially within a group context in the workplace, is talk about the expectations we have for one another, how information might be used, how well we’re going to be heard by one another, how we expect responses from one another. Unspoken expectations wind up getting us into resentment and into conflict that’s often unnecessary. It’s a slippery slope. So bringing expectations into the spoken realm becomes key.

And I’m going to tie that back, if I may, back to design thinking, because if you have a process through which people are heard, how they can engage, that they can predictably be open and willing to express themselves freely around their ideas, around concerns or whatever it happens to be, in and of itself you’re creating an environment of some predictability of expectation of how things are going to happen. So, the idea of design thinking of itself is to have inclusion, it’s to have involvement, it’s about sharing information and it’s a different way of working together. And it does in fact satisfy a level of expectation need that we all have. Yeah, go ahead, please.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I like that. So absolutely, you’ve zeroed in on that. It’s like, it seems as though we have a mismatch of expectations. I’m sort of imagining lots of inputs coming in and we’re just going to quickly triage them and going to get the document out the door quickly, given the timeline. And it sounds like you may have the expectation that each of your comments will be absolutely integrated. Is that fair? And then you can have that conversation, dialogue, and then it seems like everybody wins. So, I like that notion of, there are unspoken, mismatched expectations at work in that example and it’s great to get after them.

And there might be an epiphany moment, like, “Oh, okay, so nobody gets all of their comments integrated into the document? Oh, that’s totally cool. Okay, well sure, I didn’t know that’s the game we were playing here.” And then we’re all aligned there; that’s awesome.

So, I also want to follow up on co-creation. Could you maybe just give us an example or two, in terms of, you talk about we’re often in our own worlds, doing our own thing and missing out on the opportunities to really co-create something cool by reaching out in different places. So, could you maybe bring that to life with an example or a case study?

Edgar Papke
Yeah, sure. One of my favorites is actually what Visa does in their innovation centers. So Visa is one of the companies we talk about in the book, and they have a design function within the organization that specifically is geared towards bringing design thinking throughout the organization as a whole and involving everyone.

And what they’ve done in the co-creation space is they’ve opened innovation centers. They have several – one out in the Bay Area, in San Francisco, one in London. And what they are doing is inviting the actual customer in. So they’re doing business-to-business and of course there’s the business-to-consumer of their customer experience that’s taking place. And so what they do is they invite the customer into the innovation center, and they actually recreate or create a retail experience of some kind for a customer, for a consumer, and will get inputs from different people as part of that process, all the way down to the consumer.

So you have Visa, then you have the business itself, say whether it’s a Costco or a Neiman Marcus, whoever it is that they are working with, and then they also include their consumer, and they co-create and look at what the actual experience is of the shopper in a retail space. So you actually create the environment and the co-creation process is everyone begins to get involved in a particular innovation, whether it’s an information component, whether it’s an actual experiential moment that a consumer has, whether it’s online or in a retail environment. And so this co-creation is really about a broader involvement, different parties getting involved and bringing their ideas and bringing their thoughts into the process.

Pete Mockaitis
So, as we say the “retail environment” – so we’re actually inside a Costco with a customer, and just sort of maybe talk it out loud, like, “Hey, what are you thinking about this credit card swiper right now?” And see what happens?

Edgar Papke
Yeah, pretty much you’re taking it down to that level and see what exactly does the experience look like and how do we get input into that, so that we contextually can better understand and better create solutions to problems and create new ideas and new ways to do things.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s good. And so then that can really surface some of the nitty-gritty, in terms of, “Do I have to push English or Spanish first before I can swipe it, or can I go ahead and swipe it?” or, “Is it a chip, is it a tap, is it a swipe? How do I know when it’s ready for my swipe?” So you could really probably zero in on some of those things that might be sort of not in the immediate consciousness of a Visa executive.

Edgar Papke
Yeah, very much so. Also in the book we write about New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, and their co-creation process is broader. So New Zealand’s Trade and Enterprise group – what they’re responsible for is for expanding New Zealand’s economy on a global basis. So they also invite entrepreneurs and business owners and executives from different companies in New Zealand into the process, and they take that all the way out and do co-creation and training around design thinking that then can be used worldwide in different markets in different ways with different customers and consumers, as well as different companies.

So this co-creation can be very expansive, and it allows us to be able to integrate different ways of thinking and different ideas much more readily and quickly, as well as the creative process is more expansive, so it’s more open. And as a result of that, your ability to identify and to solve problems or identify and create opportunities is much faster, it’s much more fluid. There’s also this aspect of free expression that we all enjoy as human beings naturally, which is just to throw ideas out and see what happens. And a lot of the co-creation process and great ideas actually get generated that way.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. So now you also have an attribute that you mention called “going after the right problems”. And so, what do you mean by that, and is it common to slip into addressing the wrong problems, and how do we keep our mental acuity to stay focused appropriately?

Edgar Papke
Yeah. I think what happens a lot and we all, I believe, have this experience, is that very often we look for the shortcut or look for the easiest problems to solve. Sometimes we’re not going to take the time to collect all the information that we need to identify what a real problem can be. This attribute is coming at it through the lens of identifying what the right problem is; it becomes key to success in innovation and business.

It really does mean paying much more attention to the consumer and to the customer, and ideally involving them in identifying what is it that they’re really seeking and wanting. I’m going to go back to something that you mentioned before that I think is powerful, is that, “Do I have to go through a sequence for you as a provider of a product or service to understand who I am?” So, whether it’s in Spanish or English or whatever language it happens to be, how quickly can you communicate with me in a way that I feel both appreciated, that you’re paying attention to my way of communicating, as well as how easily you can communicate with me.

So I think when you start peeling that one away, you might say, “Well, the problem isn’t how do we guide someone into our way of doing a transaction. Perhaps what we do is we understand who the customer is and we create a technology that allows us to respond to that particular customer in a way that makes them comfortable.” In other words, if I’m Spanish-speaking and you understand that as a provider of a product or service, the right problem may not be that you put me through a process that you want me to go through; rather you design a way of interacting with me, whether it’s artificial intelligence or using whatever technology that you have, so that my comfort in communicating is much more immediate and allows me to actually be able to communicate in the way to get what I want.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, cool, thank you. And so, Edgar, tell me – anything else you really want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and talk about some of your favorite things?

Edgar Papke
I think there’s one other aspect of this that I think is important, and that’s another one of the attributes, and that’s this idea of “open spaces”. What we find more and more are these community-like spaces at organizations and that we’re creating in the workplace. And so when you start thinking about open spaces and whole communication… And whole communication is taking on different forms – different forms of art, different forms of expression that you see people using, and co-creation in and of itself – you see how these then come together, you see co-creation in open spaces, community spaces, where people can interact much more easily with one another and things are much more fluid.

That seems to be one thing that any organization can undertake to help them to be more successful, especially when it comes to design thinking. So, walking into a conference room or a boardroom and rather than having paintings on the wall, having white space on the wall for people to build ideas and to draw and to capture different ideas and build on them as they move forward over a period of time. So you see all of these attributes coming together in such wonderful ways. And one of the keys is to create the spaces for people to be able to engage one another and have that sense of both community, as well as a sense of a shared purpose. 

Pete Mockaitis
Cool, thank you. Well, now could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Edgar Papke
The first thing that comes to mind is actually something that comes from one of my heroes, one of who is Bob Dylan. And some time ago, in an interview somewhere I came across his thoughts that everything comes in threes. His way of describing it was that the blues in music is that you’ll have a 12-bar blues and it’s only wrapped around three chords. And what happens is that two cords create a tension and then the third one comes along and breaks that tension, or it takes the listener in the direction. And it builds suspense, it also delivers a resolution.

So, when I think about that and I think about how innovation occurs, there’s always these three key elements that we’re engaging in. One is that element of what it is that we’re wanting to do, and then the emotional element of “Why”. And what design thinking does in relationship to that idea, that somewhat of a quote from Dylan, is that this third piece – that creates a resolution to the tension. And if you look at “What”, “Why” and “How”, we can’t really have two successfully without having the third.

So if we have a clarity of what we want to accomplish and we have an emotional driver of “Why”, then we need to be able to understand how to get there, and what’s the process or what’s an approach to doing that. Much like if we had a “How” and we had a “What”, if we don’t have an emotional driver of “Why”, then nobody really emotionally gets engaged in pursuing the outcomes that we’re trying to create and how we do it. So there’s this element of always looking at it through that lens.

And we also do that in the book around the ideas around the collective imagination, where we talk about our human capacity and desire to participate, our desire to pursue knowledge, and our desire to express ourselves freely, that those are the aspects of human nature that drive our innovative thinking. And it’s important to always recognize the importance of having all three. You can’t really do it on two; you have to have that third.

And that simple idea that Dylan puts forward to say you’re always going to have a tension between two things in life, there’s always going to be two things that we want. It’s the third one that we need to create a resolution to move it forward. And I think design thinking does that a lot – it gives people a “How”, in terms of how to approach and be more innovative and creative and get the things out of life that they want.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. And how about a favorite study or experiment or a bit of research?

Edgar Papke
I think some of the wonderful things that Peter Drucker… And I’m going to say that there is more of a body of research in particular that Peter Drucker, one of the great management minds I think of just human history – he had a wonderful way of coming at things. And one of the things that I grab hold of is this simple idea… He wrote a book at one point about questions, and a great set of questions to ask in an organizational context.

And they do wrap right back around to things that matter most to us: What it is that we’re trying to achieve and why, and what is the true benefit we’re trying to create? And in an organizational and management context, how can we best make that happen? And I find that over time I keep going back to Peter Drucker’s work, because he was on the forefront of inquiry and asking wonderful questions as to how organizations and leaders, how they can perform at their best.

And then the way Thomas Lockwood and I in writing the book – we came at it, we started with that simple idea in mind: Let’s pose a question and let’s research, and let’s find out what great innovative organizations do and how their ability to use design thinking to be more creative and more innovative – what does that look like and is there something that’s of value in that? And I think Peter Drucker provides a wonderful model for that.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool, thank you. And how about a favorite book?

Edgar Papke
Catcher in the Rye, and Leonard Cohen’s Book of Longing, are the top two that come to my mind.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. And how about a favorite tool, something that helps you be awesome at your job?

Edgar Papke
A guitar.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Edgar Papke
Yeah. When I need some creative space, I stop what I’m doing and I pick up the guitar and play music. That very often just opens my mind up.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, cool. And how about a favorite habit?

Edgar Papke
Eating well. Sometimes it’s a bad habit. Being a former chef and having gone to culinary school, I love to eat good food, and I think it’s habitual. It’s a part of our family life as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Awesome. And is there a particular nugget that you share with your audiences or your consulting clients or in the book that really seems to resonate and gets folks kind of quoting yourself back to you?

Edgar Papke
I think the one thought that comes back the most often is that the most powerful thing we have in life is choice. Just the simple idea that if we’re open to ourselves and the world around us, we’ll always find that we always have a choice in what we do and say.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. And is there a particular place that you would point folks if they want to learn more or get in touch?

Edgar Papke
Yeah. One of course is the book, and you can get that anywhere – on Amazon and book sellers everywhere. So, just the book Innovation by Design. And we’re launching a website InnoAlignment.com, and that’s where Thomas and I are sharing our collaboration and the work that we’ll be doing together going forward.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. And do you have a final challenge or call to action that you’d issue to folks seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Edgar Papke
Yeah – to listen more. To just inquire and listen. Lead with asking good questions, sometimes the simplest question of all, which is, “Tell me more. What’s important to you? What are you thinking? Help me understand.” I think if we all just were more inquisitive with one another and listened better to one another, I think all of us would have better lives and I think progressively the world is going to keep getting better as long as we do that.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yes. Well, Edgar, thank you for these sort of inspiring and uplifting perspectives. I agree, the world would be a better place if we did some of these things. And so, it’s been a helpful reminder for me and hopefully for everyone listening. And I just wish you tons of luck with the book and all the people that you’re impacting here.

Edgar Papke

Yeah. And thank you very much. This has been a real pleasure. Thank you for the conversation, thanks for your great questions, and again, the opportunity to spend this time with you. Thank you!